Plenty of stability and performance improvements for everyone! But the three most interesting changes to Battlefield 4 are as follows.

High Frequency Network update

Added High frequency "bubble" updating player movement, stance, rotation, damage and projectiles at a separate rate on foot and in vehicles

Added option to control client side update rate setting

In the Battlefield 4 menu, Options -> Gameplay now has a "Hi-Frequency Network Update" option. Available settings are High, Medium and Low. The "update rate," also called the "tick rate,' determines how often a game updates player data (location, firing, damage, etc.). Up until now, BF4 would update ten times a second, which seems lightning quick, but is relatively slow when compared to other online games (Counter-Strike servers tend to update 66 or 100 times per second). The sheer size and scope of BF4 means its tick rate is going to be lower than smaller games like CS, but ten updates per second has proven to be way too slow.

From now on, BF4 will have several update choices, to be chosen by the server owner. 15 (Low) updates per second is now the minimum, but 20 (Medium) and 30 (High) are options now, too. If you're running on high-end hardware, a 30 tick server will ensure smoother, less random gameplay (in other words, less instances of double deaths during 1v1 firefights).

Once your game is updated, hop in and mess with the update settings, and drop your thoughts in the comments.

High Tick is a massive improvement, especially for sniping and low fire rate weapons. It helps reduce trades against high ROF weapons too since players with the VAL and similar aren't unloading lethal amounts of damage in a single server uptick.

But, I can't help but feel BF4 is steadily bleeding out with it's player base. It's been dropping under 10'000 players globally for the PC version at points, BF3 has never dropped that low in two and a half years. Naval Strike didn't especially boost player numbers either, so I'm not sure to expect much from Dragon's Teeth and Final Stand in terms of players returning either.

BF3 being free this week hasn't helped 4 either, at times this weekend BF3 PC has had more people on it than BF4 across all platforms combined, I sometimes think EA should consider extra content for BF3, it's where the numbers are.

fix-the-spade:High Tick is a massive improvement, especially for sniping and low fire rate weapons. It helps reduce trades against high ROF weapons too since players with the VAL and similar aren't unloading lethal amounts of damage in a single server uptick.

But, I can't help but feel BF4 is steadily bleeding out with it's player base. It's been dropping under 10'000 players globally for the PC version at points, BF3 has never dropped that low in two and a half years. Naval Strike didn't especially boost player numbers either, so I'm not sure to expect much from Dragon's Teeth and Final Stand in terms of players returning either.

BF3 being free this week hasn't helped 4 either, at times this weekend BF3 PC has had more people on it than BF4 across all platforms combined, I sometimes think EA should consider extra content for BF3, it's where the numbers are.

Weird, I was asking someone else the other day if BF3 was worth getting back into since BF4 seems to be a bust and they said the BF3 community was pretty much dead. Are that many people still playing BF3?

kajinking:Weird, I was asking someone else the other day if BF3 was worth getting back into since BF4 seems to be a bust and they said the BF3 community was pretty much dead. Are that many people still playing BF3?

What version?PS3 and 360, dead as Dodos, no kind of anti hacking and low player numbers (although PS3 stays above 10k players most of the time, 360 does not).

PC version has been fine the whole time, before going free player counts have been between 40-80 thousand players depending on the time (more than BF4 has had in the last couple of months too), since the free week started numbers have gone up another fifty percent-ish to 60-100k most times and north of 120k a couple of times. Right now there's 77 204 people playing BF3 on the PC, I'd say it's fairly healthy.

Kalezian:It's a sad day when a developer has to use Community Sources to fix their fucking game.

I fear this will become the norm though. They'll spin it as "personalized user input," or something. I keep hoping for BF2142, but BF3 had its issues, BF4 had/has worse issues, and I've all but lost faith in DICE as a developer as a result. This latest "we got the community to fix what we couldn't" news does nothing to restore my faith in them

kajinking:Weird, I was asking someone else the other day if BF3 was worth getting back into since BF4 seems to be a bust and they said the BF3 community was pretty much dead. Are that many people still playing BF3?

What version?PS3 and 360, dead as Dodos, no kind of anti hacking and low player numbers (although PS3 stays above 10k players most of the time, 360 does not).

PC version has been fine the whole time, before going free player counts have been between 40-80 thousand players depending on the time (more than BF4 has had in the last couple of months too), since the free week started numbers have gone up another fifty percent-ish to 60-100k most times and north of 120k a couple of times. Right now there's 77 204 people playing BF3 on the PC, I'd say it's fairly healthy.

Also it's free until midnight, get it already!

Already have it and thankfully it's the PC version. I stopped playing before the last DLC for it came out and by the time I wanted to play again 4 was right around the corner so I figured everyone would have stopped playing. (Man I hate these new short development times)

Glad to see the PC version is still going strong by the sounds of it, I could either pay 80$ for buggy and broken 4 and it's DLC or I could pay nothing and just enjoy my copy of 3.

So I'm reporting in after a few solid hours of playing on the "High" setting (on PC). I have a mid to high-end computer and tend to run my BF4 games on the medium setting to keep everything smooth as silk. I can run it on high, (probably not ultra without losing some frames) but I prefer medium because it's just blazing on that setting. As I said, it's a nice machine, but it's nothing compared to a lot of the newer computers out there. Just as a point of reference. I have nearly 300 hours in on BF4 so I've played it a lot since launch and have dealt with it through it's ups and (mostly) downs. I walked away from it for a few months because frankly, I couldn't stand the freakin' thing anymore. I feel like I got my money's worth, and I was happy to just walk away from a game that was starting to really tick me off.

My thoughts on the new patch: I've noticed a nice change in the hit detection. It's noticeable, but not an earth-shattering change. I was still killed behind cover a couple of times but it was a couple of times over a number of rounds instead of four or five times every round. It is definitely an improvement. I'd say it feels pretty much like BF3 now it terms of response and fluidity. Might be a touch more on point actually. I love BF3 but, you experienced Battlefield players know that BF3 doesn't have the greatest hit detection at times either. BF3 was a heck of a lot better than BF4 until this patch though. BF4 now feels very much like BF3. Also, the kill trades were non-existent in the rounds I played. None of those BS "I start to shoot a guy then he just insta-flips and I'm dead" routines the entire session I had. I need to put more time in to see if they're really gone, but it feels good to not have it happen once in 3 1/2 hours. Makes my cautiously, CAUTIOUSLY optimistic. Last time I felt optimistic like this for BF4 was back after launching my first BF4 round, just before the plague of disconnects and other assorted BS set in.

I'm happy to report that if you haven't played in awhile for the same reasons as me, if you loved the world of BF4 and how crazy it got when the game was functioning properly but hated all the stupid freakin' bugs and crashes, re-install and give the new patch a shot. Make sure to go into your game settings and set High Frequency Network Update to "High" though, as it will be set to off or low by default. (I don't remember which. It wasn't High though.) Best part: THE DANG GAME DIDN'T CRASH ONCE IN 3 1/2 HOURS across multiple rooms and multiple server sizes. I wanted to get into a 64 person conquest big map first to see if it still had trouble. I played the vanilla maps with no problem. I got into a few smaller Domination maps too and had no problem at all. I'm going to test the expansion packs next. Don't let me down China Rising. If any of you have feedback about those maps I'd love to hear from you and I'm sure the community here would too. I was as pissed about the game as anyone and my comment history here and other places could inform you that I'm no apologist for DICE or EA. I am happy however, that they released this patch which, as far as I'm concerned, has made the game much, much better. Just my thoughts though folks. What do the rest of you veteran Battlefield players think?

TL;DR:

-Much improved hit detection. Pretty much the same as BF3 now as far as I'm concerned. Still died behind cover, but not NEARLY as often. 3 or 4 times total over 3 1/2 hours of play vs multiple times ever dang round before the new patch.

-Only had time to test vanilla servers in 64 person big map CQ/Smaller Domination rooms. Expansions will be next.

-No insta-kills or insta-flip kill trading the entire time I played. Too early to tell on this one, but I'm optimistic.

Devin Connors: Up until now, BF4 would update ten times a second, which seems lightning quick, but is relatively slow when compared to other online games (Counter-Strike servers tend to update 66 or 100 times per second). The sheer size and scope of BF4 means its tick rate is going to be lower than smaller games like CS, but ten updates per second has proven to be way too slow.

From now on, BF4 will have several update choices, to be chosen by the server owner. 15 (Low) updates per second is now the minimum, but 20 (Medium) and 30 (High) are options now, too. If you're running on high-end hardware, a 30 tick server will ensure smoother, less random gameplay (in other words, less instances of double deaths during 1v1 firefights).

Wait, did they really hardcode 100ms as minimum possible ping even with instantaneuos communications? wow this is so beyond reason. who the hell though this was a good idea!

Especiall since large tick rates does NOT need significant hardware processing. it requires stable internet, but if you put game at high rates and bad internet your ghoing to end up being lited by internet and not hardcoded game then. thats how you do it, thats how all shooters do it.

then, i do think DICE is incompetent after my exprience yesterday of trying to play BF3. turns out the game does not even freaking launch untill i install 2 idiotic browser plugins, login to shitty websites which completely fail at finding available servers and have to manually force connection to server. then reports that game is not responding (while its loading no less) and kills it. essentially i had to trick the website detection to even let it launch the game. and i had to make my team loose by being afk while i was setting up my settings because hur durr no menus and shit. they claim it loads faster, ironically its one of the slowest loading games i ever played. had to play on punkbuster-disabled servers too because the browser plugins werent working correctly. and thats after whole day of trouble even installing the game (bout thats origin problems and not dice). nice, takes 2 days to even set up your game. takes 30 minutes to download steam ones in the background.

also whoever though no server browser inside game is a good idea needs to be fired, NOW.

But, I can't help but feel BF4 is steadily bleeding out with it's player base. It's been dropping under 10'000 players globally for the PC version at points, BF3 has never dropped that low in two and a half years. Naval Strike didn't especially boost player numbers either, so I'm not sure to expect much from Dragon's Teeth and Final Stand in terms of players returning either.

BF3 being free this week hasn't helped 4 either, at times this weekend BF3 PC has had more people on it than BF4 across all platforms combined, I sometimes think EA should consider extra content for BF3, it's where the numbers are.

had 5 hours yesterday, played BF3 for 1.5 because problems i dcecribed above. of course, part of the problems was having to wait for half hour to connect to server - all servers were full and people in que. looks like the free BF3 has put more players in than servers have slots.

Do tell me though, i met some people with kinda OP guns but majority with starter ones, is there some matchmaking that makes people play with same "level" people here or its regular whatever you join, since i kinda havent seen a single high level guy yesterday, and that could be because i was starter level and playing unranked server.

there are 4 expansions for BF3 that are on sale on origin now. havent bought any of them though, need to see if im going to bother playing the game at all first. it was quite fun, but theres so much to do and so little time i cant get into another online game now.

Do tell me though, i met some people with kinda OP guns but majority with starter ones, is there some matchmaking that makes people play with same "level" people here or its regular whatever you join,

No matchmaking, there must just be a large supply of Bambis running around at the moment.

Regards OP weapons, only one is truly OP and it's the M16a3, which is the very first weapon you get on the US team (and it's the last Assault unlock for the Russians). Shotguns and snipers can kill you in one hit but you'll have to be aiming and leading like a pro or getting right up in the enemy's face for that to happen, once you figure out how to aim assault rifles properly they don't present nearly the threat they would appear to. BF3 really boils down to how good the guy shooting at you is, even the objectively worst guns can nail you if the guy using it knows what he's doing.

I ran around in 1000pt TDM servers to get the weapon unlocks and 100kills with each, depending on how obsessive you are it's a good way to learn to shoot quickly.

As for Battlelog, yeah it's horrible. Why DICE couldn't just integrate it into the game and give you menus from a launch page is beyond me, although the letters DRM explain a lot of BF3/4's stranger design choices.

Also (also!) if you're having problem with Punkbuster (because it's stupid), use the update tool from here: http://www.evenbalance.com/?page=pbsetup.phpPunkbuster has been terrible for well over a decade, the manual update tool is about the only reliable way to make it work.

Do tell me though, i met some people with kinda OP guns but majority with starter ones, is there some matchmaking that makes people play with same "level" people here or its regular whatever you join,

No matchmaking, there must just be a large supply of Bambis running around at the moment.

Regards OP weapons, only one is truly OP and it's the M16a3, which is the very first weapon you get on the US team (and it's the last Assault unlock for the Russians). Shotguns and snipers can kill you in one hit but you'll have to be aiming and leading like a pro or getting right up in the enemy's face for that to happen, once you figure out how to aim assault rifles properly they don't present nearly the threat they would appear to. BF3 really boils down to how good the guy shooting at you is, even the objectively worst guns can nail you if the guy using it knows what he's doing.

I ran around in 1000pt TDM servers to get the weapon unlocks and 100kills with each, depending on how obsessive you are it's a good way to learn to shoot quickly.

As for Battlelog, yeah it's horrible. Why DICE couldn't just integrate it into the game and give you menus from a launch page is beyond me, although the letters DRM explain a lot of BF3/4's stranger design choices.

Also (also!) if you're having problem with Punkbuster (because it's stupid), use the update tool from here: http://www.evenbalance.com/?page=pbsetup.phpPunkbuster has been terrible for well over a decade, the manual update tool is about the only reliable way to make it work.

Could be, after all i was one of them, my first time playing BF3 was yesterday so i was one of them. still i did quite well, possibly because other people were new as well though. As far as matchmaking, so i guess the "quick match" button is useless? it kept telling me its matchmaking and always went into error.

M16a3 is the thing i was using throughout, it was a fun weapon. the only problem is it only got ammo enough for 4-5 kills (im a noob and waste ammo) and my teammates were unfamiliar with their ability to share the ammo boxes they carried. so i would end up having to switch to pistol, and theres only so many times you can headshot people with machineguns in close quarters. I did notice that manually doing burst fire is quite efficient. though i should find a way to turn off particles. hit some crap object, so much dust wont see anything around. so i would usually run away at that point and relocate to a location i can actually see stuff at.

The deagles were annoying. one guy kept one-hitting me with his deagle.

also not sure how unlocks are supposed to work. it shows me the "new" icon near loadouts ect but i cant select anything new. could this be due to me playing on unranked server so i didnt actually unlock anything?

The server i was on was TDM 8x8 (apperently small servers had less people in que so i went there) and it was till 100 kills. not sure what you mean by 1000 points, i was raking like 4000-5000 "Score" every match. not that i ever saw that score mean anything other than listing at the end of the match. dont think i personally done 100 kills with anything. i think clsoer to 50 yeasterday. there usually would be some guy with 30 or so kills and wthe rest of us around 10 per math.

yeah, i remmeber using punkbuster back in 2003, deciding it was useless and now i just met it and relaized its not some dead program from the early 00s after all. actually, the link you gave me was what battlelog sent me to when it realized mine wasnt working and that one worked. the instalation itself didnt install jack shit after downloading, it even gave me a runtime error installing directx. Origin stays Origin i guess.

ech, thanks for the reply and sorry for having such confusing train of thought.

As far as I know Battlelog 'matchmaking' just fires you at the first populated but not full server in your region it can find. It doesn't level or skill match, it is also unreliable and generally horrible as you've found out.

With the M16a3 the trick is to pull slightly down and to the left as you fire in controlled bursts, it pulls up and to the right but it's overall spread is very low. Also, aiming before you fire increases accuracy massively, if you fire then aim your spread stays on the hip fire value and you hit everything at once.

Unlocks work in that you get something every ten kills, but as you have noticed you can only get unlocks on ranked servers. Unranked servers have the option (server side) to have everything unlocked for every player, but not a lot use this option, they don't update any stats at all to Battlelog.

Sorry, by 1000pt I mean 1000 tickets. High ticket servers are useful since even if your team gets smashed the match goes on for a while. You get time and a lot of chances to actually shoot at stuff, even if nine times out of ten you lose a one v one shootout, it will steadily become eight times of ten, seven of ten etc. High player numbers are best since it matters less how good/bad you are, one guys rarely carries a team or sinks it.

Perversely I have had very few problems with Origin, only Punkbuster.

And yes, the .44 Magnum and MP412 Rex can be supremely annoying, but when you've got one....It's worth playing the Co-Op mode a bit to unlock the guns from that, the Rex, MP7 and G3 are extremely useful weapons to have.

So yeah i guess ill just do manual server search then. though region and filter selection in that seems to be broken, not that i care that much about those as i end up having better pings to other regions than locals have here sometimes (like in one game i had 77ms ping on US server while on european one i saw plenty of people go above 200, mine being 17ms). i did play on server hosted in germany, or at least it had a german flag next to it.

Yes, aiming does seem to help a lot in everything but spitting distance.

Still not sure what tickets are. is it the kill count thing like the server i played the match was over once a team achieved 100 kills? well since match just restarts and you can kill again i dont see this as a big problem other than having to wait for 1 minute till amtch restarts (during which i usually go make some tea or something anyway, thojugh admittedly the TDM was too intense to have time sipping it). Yeah, i would assume single person matters far less in 64 player modes, but i picked small one partly because it would be less chaotic and thats good for person who does not even knew controls entering (i acutally went through the first match without spawning fiddling in menus because joining matches seems to be the only way to launch the client. funnily enough when i launched the client it opened my browser and first thought was "ok this shit crashed, time to google a fix".

Well i wouldnt say one person carried the small team one but could be just because a lot of newbies around. there were times when i was the only one in the team with a K/D ration above 1, but it didnt carry the team far. i did notice that assists does not get counted though, and at some points i was doing mainly those since i wasnt alone in attacking that building ect.

as far as 1vs1 fighs go i havent counted but id say i won half or close to it. most of my deaths was being shot from side/back when i didnt knew where the enemy was. well, or sniped through a window ect because appernetly thats happening. funnily enough, i fought one person using a rocket launcher. its damn easy to avoid those or was he just a terrible shot?

ill keep the Co-Op thing in mind. sadly both of my friends who promised to play with me - didnt. one of the has a good excuse of course. the second one doesnt though.